The Brutal Truth
by Deathly Noted
Summary: Mello and Matt lived for nothing and died for nothing, except for maybe each other - and what difference did that make?


There wasn't much to say about January 26th. It was one of those days you would forget completely if you made it through another few months of drudgery, not that Mello and Matt would be afforded that luxury. They had less than four hours left to live and counting, not that they noticed or cared, because the day you died was probably like that most of the time. No, it wasn't like Matt and Mello sensed it coming and confessed how much they actually gave a fuck about each other… after all, it was just another day and that could be put off until tomorrow. It always could.

Tick,

tick,

tick, the lighter finally caught and a rush of flame warmed Matt's face as he lit another cigarette, fiddling around with a game that it turns out he would never finish. Mello was currently going over the plan again to make sure it was perfect, counting bullet by bullet with unusual meticulousness. He had even tested the smoke screen to be sure it worked – not once, but twice – and if Matt didn't know better, he would've said Mello was worried about him. But he did know better, better than anyone else in the world, that he was the last thing on Mello's mind right now; tonight it was all about Takada and Kira and L and Near, and nothing Matt did or said could change that, not that he was sure he wanted to. As for Matt, he wasn't worried at all because he trusted Mello if no one else, and so he was content to lay back on the ratty couch and zone out for the next few hours. He knew beyond a doubt that Mello wouldn't risk his life unnecessarily, wouldn't have asked for him to help if he didn't honestly believe they could pull this off, so, yes, they were going to win it. What other choice did they have?

The hours passed slowly (too quickly), but finally Mello told him it was time to go, so Matt flipped off his PSP and left it on a table next to some chocolate wrappers and an empty shot glass, intending to pick up where he left off when (if) they got home. They walked to the parking garage in comfortable silence, and Mello boarded his motorcycle while Matt got into the car and started it up without paying any particular attention. He hadn't pulled forward three feet when Mello knocked on his window with a gloved hand and Matt had to unroll it in order to hear what Mello had to say. He confirmed with Matt for what must've been the hundredth time that he understood the plan, didn't he, yes, well okay then, he would call him when it was safe to do so. Matt snapped back something sarcastic, a bit annoyed by this point and wanting to get the night over with so he could go home again and sleep… he'd be getting a lot of sleep, wouldn't he.

Less than ten minutes listening to some pointless shit on the radio for the last time and the NHN building was just around the corner, so Matt floored the pedal and shot the smoke screen and did his part because dancing with the devil takes two, you know. Mello zipped past him, and that was Matt's cue to get the hell out of there. The tires squealed as he 180ed, realizing he was cornered at one end, and then the other. The fog was clearing now, and Mello was nowhere to be seen, so at least he'd gotten out, and Matt wasn't worried, wasn't worried at all as he climbed out of the car, holding his hands above his head in half-assed surrender and wondering whether he could make a break for it by foot. Nah, he'd probably just get shot, but if he stayed still and kept calm, he would just be taken into custody, hopefully be transferred from these private bodyguards to the police, and from there he would be safe so long as Kira didn't get a glimpse of him without his goggles, and Mello would figure out a way to jailbreak him even if it took a little while. Mello could be unpredictable, but not in the ways it really counted: he was dedicated, and in this case that meant loyal as hell. They were best friends, the kind of best friends where you didn't even have to say it, you just felt it and knew it was real, and Mello may have been selfish, but not to the extent that he would leave Matt to rot in some jail cell when he'd put his life on the line for Mello countless times. Matt knew that, and he also knew that you can't play video games in an interrogation room, for one thing, and it was going to be boring as shit waiting for Mello to get him out. When he was free, Matt sure as hell wasn't going to let Mello hear the end of this … or the beginning of it, as it turned out.

"You're not going to shoot," Matt said, bored and wishing they would at least hurry up and handcuff him because he just wanted to get it over with, that is until they raised their guns and fuck was that blood –

Nothingness.

Meanwhile, Mello was feeling rather satisfied with himself. The plan had gone off without a hitch. He would call Matt in another twenty minutes or so, when he was sure he had the situation with Takada secured. Plus, he didn't want to distract his accomplice with his phone ringing off the hook if it so happened that Matt was still being tailed, though he seriously doubted that – Matt was up there with the best of them. Still, and Mello never thought he'd say this, better safe than sorry. (Little did he know, Matt was dying at that very moment, and the thing Matt probably wanted to hear most in the whole world was his cell phone going off. Even if he couldn't have answered it, it would've been a little less like dying alone, and it would've let him know that Mello was thinking of him at the end, would've given him something a bit more pleasant to consider than how much he really didn't want to die as his lungs collapsed one by one and the crowd just looked on... but the moment was gone as soon as it had come and without Mello even knowing, and it was too late, one long split second too late for even small comforts that didn't change anything.)

For the time being, Mello pushed Matt out of his mind as he transferred Takada to the back of a delivery vehicle, climbed into the front seat, and took to the highway, trying not to drive as fast as he usually did so as not to draw attention to himself. Traffic flow seemed normal, no police vehicles in sight, but it occurred to him that they may have put up roadblocks or checkpoints by now, so he decided to briefly switch the TV screen he had monitoring Takada in the back to a newscast. They were saying how the suspect had escaped, and Mello smirked, looking ahead at a future that had never seemed closer or more appealing. Finally, this was their chance at something better, the one that he and Matt had wrested from fate with more than a little difficulty because fate had never liked them very much. Well screw that bitch, they'd overcome fate, hadn't they. It took a while for Mello's smirk to die as he realized more exactly what the newscaster was describing, not _two_ escaped suspects but _one_, and he glanced at the screen so fast that the van swerved dangerously into the next lane. Matt was dead, definitively and undeniably dead – he could see it with his own two eyes on the screen replaying this same strange video clip over and over in which Matt was alive and then he wasn't anymore and someone was beeping at him, oblivious to the fact that Matt was now just a lump of blood and guts pumped full of lead, and that had been the only life in the entire world that meant anything, hadn't it.

Recollecting himself somewhat, Mello straightened out the car and stared blankly ahead, hands too tight on the steering wheel to change the broadcast back to the camera monitoring Takada even though he really should have. Matt had worked hard to set it all up for him, after all, working late into the night while Mello sat on the hood and watched him through the windshield, and Matt had laughed, his cigarette wagging between his lips as he did so and getting ash somewhere on this very seat, when Mello said something that he'd forgotten already. Why had he forgotten something like that, when Matt was dead, irrefutably and unchangeably and they had too few moments like that to afford forgetting even one. The apology that left his lips now sounded so pointless and hollow because Matt wasn't even there to hear it, would never be there again.

Better safe than sorry was right – those bastards that did this to Matt would be real fucking sorry when he was done putting a bullet in their brains, every last one, because Mello would never forget (never have the chance to forget) January 26th and certainly he would never forgive, least of all himself. He had to make it up to Matt. That was the only thing keeping him going down the road toward his goal, an abandoned building he and Matt had scoped out yesterday as a good rendezvous point. But Matt wasn't coming, no matter how much Mello had taken it for granted that Matt would always just _be_ there, as integral and inseparable as a shadow to his existence and yet just as easily taken for granted… and there was nothing, absolutely nothing that Mello could do now to change the fact that that was how it had always been between them. The time for making something of his relationship with Matt had passed before Mello had even grasped its importance, and there was nothing for it. Besides, if he didn't keep going, Matt would have died for nothing, so Mello had to accept what was happening, fast, and move the fuck on. It felt wrong, but it was necessary, and he liked to think it was what Matt would have wanted.

With a deep, steadying breath that was intended to compartmentalize any lingering thoughts of Matt's death, Mello reached out to change the channel back to the camera monitoring his captive in the back of the van. He may have stripped her, but she was still Kira's right hand, and he wouldn't put anything past her because he knew she would kill him if she had the chance. Before he could do so, however, something stopped him cold. Surely he was mistaking things, he had only glimpsed it out of the corner of one wide eye, but no, looking at the screen more closely, there was no denying it: one of the guards had just _spat_ on Matt, tipping his chin upward with a boot so that Matt's cigarette fell from lips that had been clutching at it as if he could still breathe, and then the guard kicked Matt's body so that it rolled over onto its side, looking rather broken and ugly and somehow smaller than when Matt had been a child. The newscaster was saying rather apathetically that, well, he'd gotten what was coming to him, because he'd defied Kira, hadn't he, and this was what happened to scum…

It was then that it hit him: Matt was dead, really dead, and they had no right to do that to him, no right to kill him in the first place when, really, Matt had nothing to do it… it had all been Mello's idea, Mello's fault. Quite possibly more enraged than he had ever felt in his life, mostly at himself, and unable to think of anything through the surge of emotion, Mello pressed his hand to the screen, as if he could reach into it and actually do something for Matt, and he had lost all sense of himself to the extent that he had to pull to the side of the road. He still hadn't made it to the rendezvous point, and it really wasn't safe to stop here, but this broken down church would do for now, so he tucked the truck into its shadow.

In that moment Mello seriously considered turning the car around and going back for Matt's body, even though that was stupid and impractical to the point of being suicidal. Maybe he could at least call Lidner and have her do something, but then she'd probably be recognized as an accomplice and killed, not that preserving Lidner's life mattered even a fraction as much as preserving the dignity of Matt's corpse. Mello knew that it hardly made a difference to anyone except himself how and why Matt died and what happened to the body he left behind – that even Matt himself probably wouldn't have cared what happened to his body, because he had only ever cared about how _Mello_ felt and what _Mello_ wanted, the stupid idiot, and he'd gotten himself killed for it. Mello's heart hurt and then burned as he thought of Matt, beating, beating too fast as he began to gasp for breath – a heart attack. Kira… no, Takada?... he should never have stopped here… he should have been monitoring the video feed on her more closely, not watching this news feed and thinking about how Matt was dead and he couldn't help him, couldn't stop what was coming…

The crowd was chanting now, _Kira_, _Kira_, as they began to drag Matt's body through the street and Mello wanted desperately to avert his eyes, to see anything else except that, but he hadn't even the strength or presence of mind to close them, and they widened, widened in horror as he watched Matt's corpse and knew he too would be one in a few more moments and all of it had been for –

Nothingness.

Meanwhile, Near had finally reached Lidner on her cell phone.

"I – they've killed him, the one with Mello. They're… they're hanging him from one of the lampposts…" the agent reported with a raspy quality to her voice. The chants of the crowd could be heard like cackling laughter in the background static of the phone, and Near glanced at the wall of monitors that were currently displaying various news stations as they gave status updates on Takada's kidnapping and play-by-plays of kidnapper X's death. Near had certainly never been friends with Matt, had never really noticed him until now except for the knowledge that he was third in line and, more importantly, that he was associated with Mello. Due to this fact Near had anticipated that Matt would play some part in the Kira case, but never this. This was unacceptable, Near decided, glaring at the monitors as he confirmed the situation with Lidner and tipped over the red-haired finger puppet that had been placed next to Mello's with a languid finger; Kira still stood in the center of the circle of figurines, smirking coldly, as if knowing that he had just gained another leg up on the opposition.

"Maybe we should do something, maybe we should try to find Mello and help –"

Near cut Lidner off with a cold and resounding, "No," and she did not speak anymore. "We cannot risk revealing ourselves, and Mello will be fine, I'm sure…"

Then a few things happened at once: Gevanni was on the second line, explaining that Mikami was acting strangely, and the news broadcasts were switching one by one to reports of a burning van on the side of the highway, possibly the suspect's escape vehicle, and Near realized what had happened, exactly what Mello had done and the chance he had given him, whether intentionally or unintentionally. This was it. With a silent, calculating expression, the white-haired boy overturned Mello's miniaturized counterpart as if to bury it, because there would be no way to retrieve either his or Matt's bodies, as much as Near would like to do so, if only for the sake of denying Kira the satisfaction. It wasn't like he felt a strong desire to put them to rest peacefully or make sure they were together forever – he wasn't that sentimental, and nor were Matt or Mello; in fact, they probably would've been insulted by the idea of being buried in such a conventional manner, side by side like husband and wife. No, this was better. The two plastic, lifeless figures simply lay on the floor in front of Near and did not stir.

As for what had happened to Mello and Matt's bodies, even Near wasn't sure. Probably Matt's body had ended up in a ditch somewhere, and Mello, he'd be lucky if there was any body left to speak of after going through a fire of that magnitude. No, Mello must've been ash in the wind, and Matt decomposition in the dirt… it didn't make much difference, because either way, they were dead. Maybe eventually, in the constantly shifting course of this universe… maybe somewhere along the timeline of this existence, in which Mello and Matt had lived and died, so insignificant, so easily forsaken… yes, maybe someday, the disparate grains of atoms and sand that had once been their bodies would find their way together again and reunite unknowingly on some mountaintop or maybe even in the stars – but who's to say?

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Was that depressing enough for you? Haha. I was purposely trying to make this as miserable and unforgiving as possible. I think it really may have gone down something like this, though, which is sad... poor Mello and Matt.


End file.
